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William Sinclair
William “Bill” Sinclair was a non-player character from in the Hero City game, and has since appeared in related side-projects. As a retired superhero himself, he was aligned with the heroes ingame. He acted as the CEO of Hero City Network and directed the movements of the heroes, and to a lesser degree their allies. Though cynical and ill-tempered, he had the best of intentions and always did what he believed to be right. Backstory As is often the case with superheroes, Bill’s origins are complicated. Though his father was by all accounts an ordinary person in the world Hero City takes place in, his mother was a scientist from a separate dimension entirely. Involved in an experiment into interdimensional travel gone awry, Bill’s mother became trapped in the Hero City dimension permanently with no way to even contact her home, let alone get back to it. She eventually met and married Bill’s father, and in time they had a child- Bill. However, due to his nature as the son of people existing on two completely different spatial frequencies, Bill’s very existence caused the fabric of reality to come undone in his vicinity. When he was an infant this manifested as blips in the air similar to a heat haze. As he grew older, however, he began to generate holes in the air when he was stressed or upset. At age four he was registered with the government as a metahuman, and was given coaching in emotional control and meditative techniques to help him bring his powers in hand. By his early teenage years Bill had mastered his abilities, and was able to at will create portals- which he called ‘gates’ after his mother’s failed dimensional rift- from one place to another. After finishing both high school and a bachelor’s degree in business administration (as a backup) he registered with the government reality television network Hero City as a hero called The Gatekeeper. Wanting to use his strange powers for good, Bill very quickly rose through the ranks and by his third year working for the network had become one of its most popular All Stars. He had many varied misadventures during his hero career, the most noteworthy being his part in thwarting the invasion of earth by the alien race called the Kuwar’ei and adopting the young child the Kuwar’ei cloned in his image. His career ended abruptly when a fight with a villain when horribly wrong, resulting in the death of Bill’s best friend Star Prophet (alias Devin Bourdelle) and Bill’s arm being severed at the shoulder. Though he survived, he knew that his career as a hero was finished. During his time with the network, however, Bill had noticed a deep-rooted corruption and culture of vanity. Most heroes were more interested in fame and adulation through the television show, and the promised cash reward at the end of the season, then they were in saving any days. This had nearly spelled doom for the heroes during the Kuwar’ei invasion, and had been instrumental in the events of Bill’s final battle going so poorly. (Almost everything that went wrong that day was the fault not of the villain, but of a posturing fellow hero called Richter.) Bill decided that he would make good use of his forced retirement, and become involved with Hero City Network on the corporate level rather than the frontlines. Slowly he worked his way up, through the company, until eventually after many years he achieved the position of CEO. Once there, Bill undertook to drastically reform the network, minimizing the focus on theatrics in favor of recruiting heroes with genuine morals- though he quickly learned that he couldn’t change everything overnight, and that in order to keep the business viable some concessions did have to be made. While most CEOs of the network were seldom in the public eye, tending to the company but not really getting involved in day to day ground level hero-ing, Bill very quickly established himself as something of a direct leader figure for the heroes. This had pros and cons, as having a leader kept the heroes more organized and grounded, but it also set Bill up as a scapegoat to blame whenever anything went wrong. He remained resolute in his desire to do good by the people of Heraclia- his city- but over time became very cynical and jaded. At some point after he became CEO, but before the events of the game, Bill became one of the first people to receive a fully functional prosthetic made from a rare metal in Heraclia’s mountains called mihtium, noteworthy for its unusual ability to carry nerve signals from the brain in much the way that copper wire can carry electricity. He started wearing gloves so that the mechanical arm was less eye-catching. Apart from his adopted son, Oswald, Bill’s family would come to consist of his wife, a woman named Anna, and their twin daughters, Moriah and Natalie. Together the family adopted a turkish angora kitten that had been accidentally exposed to mihtium radiation, naming him Gatsby, and a pit bull that Anna and Ossie named “Wheatley” as a joke on Bill’s portal powers. Unfortunately, while Wheatley was a perfectly loving, loveable dog, there was far more to Gatsby than any of the Sinclairs suspected... Hero City Roleplay As the events of the story began, Bill was preparing for the season premier of the autumn/winter season of Hero City. He spoke briefly with Tabitha Kingsley and Dossier Dame about the planned events for the next few days, though he ended up being distracted from the conversation by a text from the teacher of his daughter, Moriah, telling him she’d gotten detention for having her phone out in class. Bill took a brief detour to pick her and her sister Natalie up from school before returning to the season premier. The next morning, however, things took a turn for the bad when an important flash drive with secret government mihtium research was stolen out of Bill’s office. There was no sign of anyone on the security cameras entering or leaving, but something had set off the metal detectors at the entrance to the network building, and somebody had entered his office using the swipe card of his personal secretary… who less than a minute later had used that same swipe card in the elevators. Bill realized that there was only one person who could have done all of this; a hero named Timothy Hikes, alias Glitch, who had time manipulation powers. He gathered the remaining heroes. After multiple attempts to contact his erstwhile employee failed, he split up the heroes, sending some to unhappily search for the coworker they weren’t yet ready to believe had really betrayed them, and sending others to attend a concert being held by pop sensation The Queen as part of Hero City’s marketing for the season. Unfortunately, The Queen turned out to be allied with Heraclia’s enemies, and her concert erupted into a brainwashed mob- in which Bill’s children Oswald and Moriah were helplessly trapped. The mob eventually spread out into the city, taking hours to break up. Unbeknownst to Bill, while all this was going on his dog Wheatley escaped the family’s yard and was running loose in the city. The following day, doing his best to ignore scathing political cartoons at his expense in the newspapers, Bill tried to regain some semblance of control over the situation, giving the hero Tabitha Kingsley what little information he had to help her investigate what had happened at the concert. Later on the heroes were able to confirm Glitch’s betrayal, as well as the involvement of a former hero turned villain Nyx Nightshadow, and an up to that point little known handy man going under the alias “Gordon Page.” Things very promptly went bad again the very next day, however, as three different supervillains- Screaming Scimitar, Darkborn, and Tripwire- attacked different points of the city at once. Bill did his best to coordinate the city defenses, but was distracted when he got a call from the city animal control finally affirming Wheatley’s whereabouts. Bill went to pick up his dog, unaware that elsewhere Tripwire had managed to corner Ossie and- mistaking the cloned boy for his father- was trying to kill him. Fortunately for both Ossie’s life and Bill’s sanity he was rescued. Bill continued to face pointed questions from the press as one of his heroes, Fireflyman, was caught laying out a trap for the fan favorite Nimbus, while yet another hero Mizshu was framed for theft. What was more, odd stories were surfacing of the supervillains taking their orders from, of all things, a cat. The CEO finally got some time off work, and decided to pay a visit to Nimbus in the hospital. On the way he ran into Nimbus’ sidekick, Chlorolad, and offers the young boy some condolences… which are promptly interrupted by the show’s resident arrogant womanizer, DUDE BRO. Bill attempted to get DUDE BRO to leave him and Chlorolad alone by portaling him into a dumpster, but this only succeeded in enthusing the man even more, to both the sidekick and the CEO’s dismays. Things weren’t going well for Bill in his personal life either- his daughter Moriah was still badly shaken from her experience in the mob at the Queen’s concert, and Bill was at a loss for how to help her while he was needed by the city. He couldn’t even rely on his cat for comfort, the animal largely absent most of the time and aloof- or even bitey- when he was around. That night the government facility that had trusted Bill with the flash drive in the first place was broken into, earning the network head a rather scathing set-down from the head of the facilitly, Irene Blake. Bill was able to silence her, however, when he revealed that his heroes had managed to track the villains to their hideout, and were getting ready to raid it. The raid went over almost exactly as planned, and while several of the heroes were hurt, they managed to get back the materials that were stolen from the facility. That night, the villains retaliated by abducting Ossie. Understandably distraught, Bill nonetheless did his best not to overreact to the situation and trust the heroes to find Ossie. Two days later, the villains distracted the heroes by destroying the rails of one of Heraclia’s elevated trains, and while they were trying to save pedestrians from the falling locomotive, Nyx cornered Bill and gave him their terms; the secret identities of all of the heroes on the show for Ossie’s life. Bill’s response was less capitulating than Nyx might have liked, and once she left again he went to help the others divert the falling train with his portal powers. Later that night, Bill travelled to the designated meeting place where Nyx had arranged to trade Ossie for the information she wanted. However, he found that one of the show’s sidekicks, Scaletta, had been spying on him and gone ahead to fight the villains. Nyx and her companion- the Black Cat that was leading the villains- escaped, assuming that Bill had sent the sidekick to attack them. Scaletta confronted Bill, accusing him of betraying the heroes by bringing their personal information to the villains. Bill, furious, revealed that the identity information he’d been about to give the villains was all fake, and that when they tried to attack the people in the file he was handing over, they would be walking into a government trap. Having had enough of the mistrust of everyone around him, Bill resigned as Hero City’s CEO. As the villains gloated and the heroes scrambled to reorganize, two of the heroes- Chlorolad and one that went by Dynamic- searched the city for their former boss. They eventually managed to find him, having a heart-to-heart with Bill and reaffirming that he was still needed and appreciated, even if it often didn’t seem as such. Bill agreed to think on what they’d said, but urged them to go back and help the city. A little later, Bill was finally confronted directly by his opposite among the villains, the Black Cat. They sniped at each other for a while- the cat admitting inadvertently that he was more familiar with Ossie than a captor should be with their hostage- but eventually parted ways again. For a time Bill fell off the radar, and no one seemed sure what had become of him. However, just as things for Heraclia were looking extremely grim, he resurfaced, having gathered a small army of retired heroes from his own days on the show and since to help stomp the villains for good. Glitch managed to fight off the brainwashing that had sided him with the villains long enough to “accidentally” release Ossie, and after a long, harrowing battle, the heroes triumphed. Bill resumed his role as the CEO of Hero City Network, and in time things settled and became relatively peaceful once more. However, the Black Cat hadn’t been arrested when the other villains were, and Bill couldn’t help noticing that Gatsby had vanished around the same time... Personality Even in his younger days Bill was never the most personable sort. A quiet, introverted bookworm with a passion for the classics, Bill tended to keep other people at arm’s length. This wasn’t especially helped by the fact that he was short-tempered and tended to hold the world to an unrealistic standard of morality, causing him to frequently rub others the wrong way. With the few friends he did make he showed a side of himself that was… still a quiet, introverted bookworm, but one with a lowbrow sense of humor, a weakness for anything cute and fuzzy, and an unwavering conviction to what he believed to be right. This stood in some contrast to perception of him by the viewing audience of the Hero City show; as a dark, brooding edgelord, a reputation Bill found exasperating but never enough that he made much effort to disabuse it. This dismissal of his own public image would come back to bite him as CEO, however, leading him to be publically panned as a wannabe-king of Heraclia and scapegoated for every little failure on the part of his heroes. Aging into a jaded, cynical veteran, Bill’s moral core was (while very much still present) blunted under a lifetime of watching heroes grandstanding instead of helping people and being rebuffed in his attempts to talk them around (often because he was unintentionally a prat about it). If approached with respect, Bill can still show that soft, quiet side of himself. But it manifests much less as the stresses of life wear on him. Relationships Oswald Sinclair As Ossie likes to explain it, Bill had no obligation to take in the mindless drone that aliens had created from his DNA. But he did, raising the baby as his own son, seeing that he received medicine to counteract the genetic conditioning that sapped Ossie’s free will and showing the boy all the love of a true father. The two are extremely close, and Ossie is one of the few who can still get Bill to smile and even laugh. Anna Sinclair Anna met Bill while he was still on active duty as a hero. She was an intern at Heraclia General Hospital, and frequently found herself in the position of putting Bill back together after he got the stuffing knocked out of him by villains. He admired her no-nonsense attitude and the fact that she stood up to him despite his fame, and she liked that he was more down-to-earth than most of his contemporaries. After several years of friendship the two began dating, and not long after Bill lost his arm and retired he and Anna married. Bill still relies on Anna to keep him grounded. Moriah Sinclair In sharp contrast to her mother, Moriah is one of her father’s foremost headaches. One of his twin daughters with Anna, Moriah at eleven years old is the epitome of a rebellious sullen tween. Resentful of having to live in the shadow of her father’s fame, she rebels against his authority at every turn, and their relationship has become extremely strained in recent years. Though deep, deep down Moriah still loves her father, she would never ever admit it, and makes a point to denounce him to his fans on her favorite fanfic forum. Natalie Sinclair Moriah’s twin sister, Natalie, is her opposite in almost every way. Well behaved, chipper, and eager to please, she and Bill have an easy, loving relationship. He feels bad that his and Anna’s busy schedules mean Natalie frequently gets the backwash of Moriah’s bad behavior- such as having to stay with her in detention- and tries to make up for it by giving Natalie little rewards and treats. Wheatley Bill doesn’t have much time to spend with his dog, but he loves the big dumb goober dearly and makes certain Wheatley knows it. Bill is unaware of Wheatley’s sapience and his ability to speak, but fortunately for both man and dog Wheatley isn’t hiding any nefarious intentions to sour their relationship. Unlike... Iskender Bill adopted the mihtium irradiated kitten that was Iskender not long after the accident that killed the rest of the cat’s family. Naming the kitten Gatsby, Bill raised him to the same sort of rules and restrictions any reasonable cat owner would impose on their pet- unaware that what was reasonable for a normal cat was viewed as cruel and restrictive by a kitten with adult-human level intelligence. In the early stages of their relationship Iskender couldn’t yet talk to explain his feelings, and by the time the cat got the knack the bitterness was too deeply ingrained and Iskender had no desire to come to terms with his human “captors.” Though Iskender kept up the act of being a normal house pet around the Sinclairs, secretly he began to organize Heraclia’s criminal underbelly under the alias of the Black Cat. Though he never outed himself directly to Bill, the Hero City CEO wasn’t oblivious to the coincidence of his beloved cat going missing at the same time the Black Cat fled Heraclia after the events of the game. Though Bill still loves cats, he will probably never quite trust them enough to adopt another. Dossier Dame This veteran hero predated Bill on the show by some time, and they quickly became friends during Bill’s active service. Bill respects DeeDee’s intelligence and tenacity, and DeeDee respects the fact that Bill is and always has been in it for the greater good rather than his own wealth or fame. They still chat regularly, and Bill’s interference has kept the elderly hero from being forced to retire- though he does privately wish she would think of her own health at some point. Chlorolad One wouldn’t think that a cynical old veteran CEO would have much to do with a teenaged sidekick. However, circumstances conspired for Bill and Elwood (AKA Chlorolad) to find themselves meeting on several occasions. Bill was kind and sympathetic to Chlorolad when his mentor fell into a coma, and (tried to) protect him from the unwanted advances of DUDE BRO. Chlorolad respected his boss (and was a lowkey Gatekeeper fan) and gave Bill a level of trust and respect that the older man greatly appreciated. Tabitha Kingsley Bill has mixed feelings about Tabitha. On the one hand he appreciates her politeness, respect for his authority, and her proactive attitude towards hero work. On the other, she can occasionally aggravate him when she gives unwanted advice and even less wanted lectures about propriety. Overall he gets on with her well and appreciates everything she does, he just wishes he could talk to her one adult to another without being worried he’s about to be told off. Tripwire Though their relationship wasn’t explored in much depth, it was implied during the course of the game that Trip and Bill’s tenures overlapped by at least a little while, and that Bill is the only one or one of a very few that Tripwire has never successfully hit when she aimed at them. (Bill’s portal powers allow him to redirect Trip’s bullets and arrows.) Though she doesn’t consider him a nemesis in any noteworthy sense, he does somewhat irk her as “the one that got away” and if the opportunity presents itself she’s more than willing to have a go and clearing that smudge on her record. Star Prophet A hero that Bill knew and was close friends with while he worked as the Gatekeeper. Star’s death in the same battle that Bill lost his arm left a lasting mark on the man. More info to come when Shinko (hopefully) finishes her prequel story. Trivia * Early on Bill was intended to be more of a scuzzy businessman, evidenced by some of his dialogue in the Round 0 narratorpost. However this characterization was almost immediately dropped since it was clear the hero characters were being played moralistically for the most part, and it followed that their leader would be someone reflective of that. * His surname, Sinclair, is an homage to the character Augustus Sinclair from Bioshock 2, who was a slimeball buisnessman that was nonetheless a trustworthy ally if only because he was straightforward about his priorities and you always knew exactly where he stood. Shinko found it a good parallel to what she intended Bill Sinclair to be early on. (Though again, this didn’t last much past the narratorpost.) * Shinko never initially specified how popular Bill was or wasn’t when he was an active hero on the show. But when someone else referred to him as “one of the show’s most popular All Stars” in their own post, she rolled with it.